Kony's Ivory: How Elephant Poaching in Congo Helps Support the Lord's Resistance Army

The Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA, is now using elephant poaching as a means to sustain itself. LRA leader Joseph Kony—wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity—has ordered his fighters to bring him elephant tusks. Eyewitnesses report that the LRA trades tusks for much-needed resources such as food, weapons and ammunition, and other supplies.

In a visit to Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or DRC, in January 2013, the Enough Project and the Satellite Sentinel Project documented evidence of LRA poaching operations through interviews with park rangers, LRA escapees, and recent senior defectors. This report demonstrates how killing elephants in Congo is helping to support the LRA’s continuing atrocities across central Africa. It links the group’s activities in Garamba to the growing regional and global ivory trade, which is threatening the survival of African elephants.

With prices at record-high levels, trading illegal ivory offers the LRA another way to sustain itself in addition to its habitual pillaging.Former senior fighters who defected from the group report that the LRA trades ivory for arms, ammunition, and food. Former captives said that they saw LRA groups in the DRC and the Central African Republic, or CAR, trade ivory with unidentified people who arrive in helicopters.

LRA fighters in the park have at times outgunned and outmaneuvered the Garamba park rangers through the use of automatic weapons, satellite phones, and GPS transmitters.

In recent years, elephant poaching has reached record levels across Africa. The killings exceed their reproductive replacement rate, putting Africa’s wild elephants at risk of local extinction. And the LRA is not the only group benefiting from the exploding demand for ivory from elephant tusks. A number of armed groups participate in elephant poaching across the region. As a consequence, the United Nations estimates that there may have already been a 50 percent to 90 percent decrease in the elephant populations of the CAR and DRC. Park rangers in Garamba suspect that members of the Congolese, South Sudanese, Sudanese, and Ugandan armed forces, as well as state-sponsored militias including the Janjaweed from Darfur, are participating in killing the park’s elephants at an accelerating pace. The LRA’s involvement in the trade is particularly troubling since the resources it gains from ivory supports its continuing violence, undermining the international community’s efforts to dismantle the group.

Who We Are and What We Do

The Satellite Sentinel Project, or SSP, a partnership between the Enough Project and DigitalGlobe, conducts monitoring of both Sudan and South Sudan to assess the human security situation, identify potential threats to civilians, and detect, deter and document war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Enough Project provides field research, policy context, and communications strategy. DigitalGlobe provides imagery from its constellation of satellites and geospatial analysis from the DigitalGlobe Analysis Center. SSP is funded primarily by Not On Our Watch.